It’s just typical – the morning we are due to leave the New Valley to drive back to Luxor, the weather has really brightened up, the sun already hot by 9.00am. We were planning to see a few more sites on the way out of Kharga, which would make the day ahead a lot more interesting. We still had the company of Basim, our constant police companion and there were mutterings about him asking for a lift back to Luxor with us, but we also had a police truck to escort us today too.

Our first stop was at Qasr el-Ghueita, one of the Kharga chain of hilltop fortresses which may once have housed a garrison of Roman troops, but which also contains a temple dated to Persian Dynasty XXVII and XXVIII, during the reigns of Amasis and Darius. The Arabic name of the mudbrick Roman fortress means ‘fortress of the small garden’, evidence that it was once part of a thriving agricultural community. It is perched on a high hill and a long sandy path leads up the slope to the temple entrance. Though dated to the Persian rulers the temple itself may have existed here from as early as the Middle Kingdom and it is thought that pictures of grape harvests in many Theban tombs may have described the gardens. Oasis wine was also a favourite during the New Kingdom. Within the high walls of the fortress, the sandstone temple occupied about one fifth of the space and was dedicated to the Theban triad of Amun, Mut and Khons. Much of the remaining decoration is Ptolemaic, with well-preserved screen walls and several floral columns.

Gheuita is probably the most well-decorated temple I’ve seen in the New Valley and the reliefs are superbly intricate. In typical Ptolemaic style, there are three sanctuaries in the back of the temple which still contain many remnants of coloured paint. We climbed up an adjacent staircase to the roof, from where we had a lovely view into the temple as well as across the surrounding countryside. The sandstone temple is surrounded by remains of the mudbrick structures of the fortress which are also scattered down the slopes of the hill. The temple is currently under the auspices of Yale University’s Theban Desert Roads Project.

Further west we stopped at another fortress and temple, the ruins of Qasr el-Zayyan, one of the largest and most important ancient settlements in Kharga Oasis. This time situated on a flat plain, Qasr el-Zayyan was also a Ptolemaic and Roman monument which was famous for its large well, an important source of water that gave the town the name of Takhoneourit, or Tchonemyris in Greek. The deep well can still be seen inside the massive enclosure wall of the temple.

The small sandstone temple within the fortress was dedicated to the god ‘Amun of Hibis’, who was known to the Romans as Amenibis and who we had met in other sites in the Oasis. The entrance gate in the southern side of the wall and has a lintel with a dedicatory inscription in Greek: ‘To Amenibis the great god of Tchonemyris and to the other gods of the temple, for the eternal preservation of Antoninus Caesar, our Lord and his whole house . . .’ and goes on to name the governor and officials involved in the restoration. The inscription is dated 11 August AD140. Though the temple is not so prolifically decorated as Qasr el-Ghueita, or as well preserved, it is a nice little monument. There are also a great many mudbrick structures in the surrounding area within the fortress walls.

Time was moving on and we also had to get a move on if we were to get to Luxor today. But first we were hoping to stop for coffee. I was beginning to despair as we drove further and further out of Kharga Oasis, until we eventually pulled up at a roadside coffee shop right on the edge of the Oasis. We stayed here for around an hour and had several cups of delicious coffee while Abdul and Basim drank tea and played dominoes with some of the locals. When we were asked if we needed a toilet before the next long leg of the drive, Sam and I accepted, thinking they must have one around the back of the café. We followed a man down a village street wondering where he was taking us and eventually were shown into the courtyard of a house where the owner had recently installed a new European-style toilet. A galabeya-clad lady proudly showed us the bright pink facilities and left us to it. The necessities of life have always been a problem while travelling around out-of-the-way places in Egypt. It’s a little embarrassing the way tourists are specially treated but Egyptian hospitality will prevail. Personally I’d rather go behind a rock in the desert, so as not to cause any trouble to people, but they are all so kind and eager to please. It’s also a source of baksheesh of course.

When we arrived at the little village of Bagdad and the last police checkpoint of the New Valley, Basim finally left us to travel back to Kharga City with the police truck. A fair bit of baksheesh had been handed over for his ‘services’, which has become an expensive part of tourist police protection on this trip – whether we wanted it or not, we were not given the choice. Waving the police goodbye we turned onto the Luxor road for the long four hour drive over the plateau. We passed the railway line that goes from Kharga all the way to Toshka, far out in the southern Sahara, now all sanded up and I wondered who cleans up the tracks when a train is coming.

Today there were many road works and long stretches of resurfacing work that was difficult to drive over and by the time we reached Luxor the sun had set and darkness had arrived.

Abdul drove over the bridge and dropped us at our apartment in Ramla. Fiona, Malcolm and I decided to go down the road to the Mersala hotel for dinner and who should we meet there but my old travelling companion Robin, now a Luxor resident. It was lovely to see her and we stayed and chatted for a while before walking home and collapsing into bed.

The planned early start today didn’t happen until about 9.30am, after a few hours of cleaning the apartment, breakfast, finishing packing up and then loading Abdul’s minibus for our trip to the Western Desert. Eventually we were on the road at last and heading south to Armant then turning east at el-Rizeiqat checkpoint onto the road over the escarpment.

It’s around 240km from el-Rizeiqat to the checkpoint at a village called Bagdad where we join the main road that runs through the New Valley. The desert road is straight and featureless with endless stony sand stretching as far as the eye can see, seemingly devoid of any living thing. But at least the road surface was generally good – not always the case – and we were only slowed down by spitting gravel during a few kilometres where re-surfacing was taking place. The most interesting part of the drive is coming down over the Kharga escarpment, where we stopped for a few minutes to admire the view. The Kharga depression seen from here is a far-off strip of green, a distant patchwork and the promise of civilization to any desert traveller. On reaching Bagdad we turned south to the town of Baris and then onto a new road leading to the winding sandy tarmac track that would take us to the Roman Fortress and Temple of Dush.

Suddenly the large hill on which the fortress stands was there before us and we pulled up in front of a cluster of buildings at it’s foot. I’ve been to Dush before and then, like now, I was impressed by the site of the fortress and temples on this huge sandy slope. We met the gafir and bought our tickets for 25 LE each. Although overcast, the day was warm and made warmer by our tramp up the steep slope through soft sand on a path leading up to the temple.

The Fortress, Qasr ed-Dush, was completed around AD 177 on the site of the ancient town of Kysis whose remains lie scattered around the hillside. As a border town, the fortress was strategically placed at the intersection of five desert tracks and probably guarded the Darb al-Dush, an east–west track to the Esna and Edfu temples in the Nile Valley. As a result it was solidly built from mud bricks and heavily garrisoned during Roman times. Parts of the massive walls can still be seen.

The sandstone temple adjoining the fortress was dedicated to Isis and Serapis, the Greek name for Osiris. We walked through the monumental stone gateway with its dedicatory inscription by Trajan dated to AD 116 and noted also the graffiti left by nineteenth century travellers many of whose names are now famous. The forecourt is still paved though wind-blown sand has piled up in the corners and against the remains of its five columns. A pillared hall, containing four slender columns fronts the sanctuary where an offering table still stands. The best view of the temple is from the roof which is accessible via a stone staircase to one side of the sanctuary. The gold decorations that once covered parts of the temple and earned it renown have long gone, but there is still some decoration on the inner stone walls.

The area around the temple is covered by low mudbrick walls outlining ancient buildings of the town and the sandy ground is littered by a mass of red pottery sherds. We walked across to another intriguing structure, apparently another temple built from mudbrick and with a vaulted roof. This is undecorated and little is known about the building. After a while we made our way back down the slope. I noticed a lot of recently landscaped buildings which I imagine is a new dig-house belonging to the French archaeologists of the IFAO who have been excavating here since 1976. Last time I visited here we saw only a village of tents!

Driving onwards in the minibus towards Kharga City we asked Abdul to stop so that we could photograph a series of sand dunes – the largest ones to be seen in this oasis and a good example of how nothing will stop a dune when it is marching. Telegraph poles, roads and even villages just have to be moved out of their way. After another 100km we arrived at our destination which was the Solimar Pioneer Hotel for two nights.

We all form pictures in our mind of the places we will visit and even though I’ve seen photographs of the fortress of Dush, it seemed very different to how I’d imagined it. For a start the drive from Kharga was much further than I’d thought – at the very southern edge of the oasis, Dush is an outpost at about 100km from the city and we drove past several crescent-shaped Barkan sand-dunes and yardangs, or mud-lions, on the way. As we turned off the main Kharga road onto a sand-covered tarmac track we finally found the Roman fortress rising from the high ground ahead of us, while a group of little white tents belonging to the French IFAO excavation team were clustered below on the plain.

It was quite a climb up the slope of soft sand to get to the temple, which was built from stone and was bigger and better preserved than I had imagined. This area in ancient times was known as Kysis and comprised several villages surrounded by cultivation with quite a sophisticated irrigation system of underground pipes, which has been investigated by recent excavators. The sandstone temple, dedicated to Osiris and Isis, butts onto the side of the fortress, within its outer walls and was probably built by the Emperor Domitian, with further additions and decoration by Trajan and Hadrian. There is a dedicatory inscription of Trajan on the large stone entrance gate and this is dated to 116 AD. Inside there is a courtyard with remains of columns, a pillared hall and further chambers leading to the sanctuary. Some of the walls in the inner temple have lovely reliefs depicting Roman emperors and deities. The walls were reputedly once partially sheathed in gold leaf, which must have looked amazing. We went up a staircase onto the roof from where there are wonderful views across the once-cultivated area which the desert has now reclaimed. In 1989 a hoard of treasure was discovered in one of the store-rooms in the temple. Known as the ‘Dush Treasure’, now in Cairo Museum, a collection of superb religious artefacts was buried for safety probably during the 5th to 6th centuries AD. I made a mental note to look for it in Cairo.

From the stone temple we could see mudbrick ruins of a second temple across the sloping hillside. When we walked over the pottery-covered sand to the site we could stand inside the tall walls and look up at the barrel-shaped vaulted roof, but there was no plaster or decoration remaining here and little to give us any information. This structure is also probably Roman but little else is known about it. We spent quite a long time in the mudbrick temple, an eerily romantic setting, before moving on to our next destination.

Back towards Kharga City, a little way off the main road, we came to the ‘fortress of the small garden’, Qasr el-Ghueita. This is another imposing Roman fortress, perhaps once a garrison headquarters, that commands wonderful views from the top of a hill over the surrounding desert. The settlement which dates back to at least the Middle Kingdom was called in ancient times Per-ousekh and was renowned for its grape cultivation and wine and is mentioned in many Theban tombs. Within the Roman fortress walls is a large yellow sandstone temple probably dating from the Persian Period or perhaps even earlier and dedicated to the Theban Triad. We walked between the screen walls of a Ptolemaic pronaos into a courtyard. I liked this temple even more than Dush and its richly decorated hypostyle hall with beautiful floral columns was a joy. Most of the decoration here appeared to be Ptolemaic with the usual scenes of Nile Gods and nome symbols lining the lower registers and I saw several cartouches as well as unusual-looking deities. There were three small sanctuaries here which would have once held the cult statues of Amun, Mut and Khons but the decoration was blackened with age. From the roof we could see another structure with screen walls and columns, perhaps a mammisi or birth-house.

Our next stop was Qasr el-Zayyan, just a little further towards Kharga and close to the main road. One of the largest and most important settlements in the oasis Qasr Zayyan is another link in the chain of Roman fortresses that guarded the trade routes. The Greeks called the settlement Tchonemyris, which means ‘The Great Well’ and the well itself can still be seen within the massive well-preserved mudbrick enclosure walls. This major source of water would have given the place a great deal of importance in ancient times and it would have probably functioned as an overnight stop for travellers. Inside the enclosure is a sandstone temple dedicated to one of the major oasis gods, ‘Amun of Hibis’ (the Roman Amenibis) and constructed during the Ptolemaic and Roman periods. A large stone gateway, partially covered by blown sand, fronts the temple and on the lintel above a dedicatory text has a Greek inscription dated to 140 AD: ‘To Amenibis the great god of Tchonemyris and to the other gods of the temple, for the eternal preservation of Antoninus Caesar, our Lord and his whole house . . .’ and goes on to name the governor and officials involved in the restoration. Inside the small temple there is a courtyard that leads to a sanctuary.

We wanted to get back to Kharga as early as possible today so that our drivers could break their Ramadan fast at the proper time. At 6.00pm all went out into town to a local restaurant where Abdul had pre-arranged a table for us straight after the Itfar meal for the locals had ended. This was a typical Egyptian restaurant with long tables and bench seats. The scrubbed wooden tables already contained stacks of local flat bread and metal jugs of water when we were seated and the only menu choice was beef or chicken. Fortunately this was accompanied by my usual Egyptian vegetarian diet of rice and vegetables, but it was very good. We have been accompanied today by an Indian lady called Mina, a solo traveller who we met in our hotel this morning. Unfortunately having an extra unscheduled person with us has caused problems for the drivers with both the tourist police and the minibus company so it looks like she won’t be going any further with us. After our meal a few of us sat in a coffee shop for a couple of hours. It’s great to chill out and talk about the day’s sites with like-minded people, but before Midnight we reluctantly walked back to the hotel, while Kevin told us about something quite unidentifiable but disgusting he found in the fridge in his room. I am thankful that this will be the last night sleeping here because I still haven’t identified those insects that were in my bed last night.

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